ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — For some of those jolted out of camps in Kirkuk province by the Iraqi government’s mission to rapidly close displacement camps across the country, living in unsafe structures in the provincial capital is preferable to returning to their areas of origins. “We are in a rented house here, although it’s not even a house,” Samr Raad, an IDP from the Kirkuk’s Riyadh district, told Rudaw’s Hardi Mohammed on Monday. He now lives in an illegal construction in Kirkuk city’s Wahed Huzairan neighborhood. There are more than 90,500 IDPs in Kirkuk, and more than 300,000 returnees in the province, according to data released in late December by the International Organization for Migration. The ministry's mid-October decision to accelerate camp closures with limited notice to camp residents has left many displaced families vulnerable. The move has put more than 100,000 people in "tremendous peril," according to the Norweigian Refugee Council (NRC). Scores of displaced people come from areas where they could potentially be blocked from passing or arrested at checkpoints due to a lack of security clearance or a belief they are part of armed groups, aid organizations warn. While returning families have been promised a grant of $1,250 from Iraq's Ministry of Migration and Displaced People to help them resettle back into their communities, a limited number of returnees are reported to have received the compensation. “They told us to go back to our places and we will compensate you with one million and a half (Iraqi dinars), and we will do everything for you from Migration and Displacement. We left with our official documents, we give them the documents, they tell us to get support documents, and then they asked for cards,” Muthanna Mahmoud, an IDP from Kirkuk’s Hawija district, told Rudaw on Monday. “The conditions are hard to get by with and we haven’t had an outcome [from our compensation application] yet.” Iraq’s camps have largely already been shut down, except for one in Nineveh province and those in the Kurdistan Region, Ali Abbas, spokesperson for Iraq’s Ministry of Migration and Displacement, told Rudaw on Friday. “We are all renting. We are a big family and we are tired. Even if we go back, we don’t have a place,” said Ghazi Samad, from Kirkuk’s Rashad district, on Monday. Kirkuk province constitutes part of the territories disputed between Erbil and Baghdad, as well as areas in Nineveh, Salahaddin and Diyala. “We used to live in Tikrit, I transported my documents to Tikrit, now they don’t let me bring it back, otherwise my ID is on Kirkuk,” Sabah Salih, from Salahaddin province’s Tikrit, told Rudaw on Monday. The Islamic State group (ISIS) seized control of large swathes of Iraqi territory in 2014, forcing millions of people to flee. Many of the displaced fled to the relative safety of the Kurdistan Region, but others remained in federal Iraq. The Minister of Migration and Displacement Evan Jabro told Rudaw late November that Iraq has launched an “emergency plan” to provide housing for Iraq’s internally displaced amid camp closures. Kurdish officials have accused authorities in Kirkuk of a systemic Arabization project, similar to ethnic cleansings campaigns seen under the time of Saddam Hussein. Thousands of displaced Arabs moving to city as a result of conflict have made some Kirkuk residents nervous of the large influx. “Most of the IDPs are from Tal Afar, on the Mosul border, but I will honestly tell you that some of them are temporarily in Kirkuk, so that they are away from problems, especially tribal and social problems, this will not cause demographic change,” Karim Nuri, Undersecretary of the Ministry of Migration and Displaced, Karim Nuri told Rudaw on Sunday.
